Description

Once long ago in a faraway kingdom, a little girl named Racette lived in town on the main street with her father, a heroic adventurer. This town was no ordinary town as it was near mysterious ruins, ancient dungeons and other phenomena that attracted the adventuring sort. One day her father went off on one of these adventures, and bought himself all kinds of equipment for his journey. But he never returned... Racette waits until she hears a knock on the door: The debt collector has arrived, a fairy named Tear, who gives Racette an option: work hard and use her house's prime location to open a shop. Through buying and selling items, Tear hopes to get Racette to pay off her father's debt in full. Racette agrees and by merging the two names together comes up with a name for the shop: Racettear.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is part business simulation and part action game. The player takes the role of Racette whose main objective is to earn enough wealth to pay off an upcoming debt deadline. Each day is divided up into five time units. Performing different actions will use up one or more time units. For instance, opening the shop and dealing with customer sales will use up one time unit. Leaving the shop to explore the town will also use a time unit. When opening the shop, Racette must choose which items to put on display. Different customers will enter the shop, find something they like and haggle about the price. Successful transactions result in money being earned as well as experience points for Racette. As Racette's experience increases, she develops new merchant skills such as the ability to do fusion to make new items, or take special orders from customers.

In addition to the Racettear shop, the town map contains a pub, chapel, square, merchant guild, adventurer's guild and marketplace. The marketplace is a straight buying and selling of various goods, often expensive to buy and cheap to sell but is the only place to find certain items. The Merchant Guild is where items can be bought below-cost and then taken back to the Racettear shop to be sold at a profit. The Merchant Guild is also where "fusion" takes place, combining different items and ingredients to form a new type of item. The pub, chapel and square are where events and cutscenes generally occur.

The Adventurer's Guild is where the player can choose an adventurer to take out to the dungeon. This uses 3 units of time and can only be done at the beginning of the day. The primary purpose of entering a dungeon is to obtain items which can then be taken back to the shop and sold, or used in fusion combinations. Once in the dungeon, the player controls this adventurer on an overhead view. One button uses their weapon and one button performs a special attack. Defeating monsters will earn the adventurer experience points which increase their skills, hitpoints and special points. Each floor is a randomized map which contains monsters, treasure chests, traps and a portal to the next floor. Every 5 floors the player will encounter a doorway back to town and usually a boss creature. Successfully reaching the exit to the dungeon allows the player to take 20 items with them back to the shop. If the adventurer loses all their hitpoints and is defeated, they return to town wounded and only able to carry a single item.